Professional Documents
Culture Documents
21 OCT 2010
Abstract
Draft – to add:
1
1. INTRODUCTION
2
passports’ to refer to resilience stock/capacities (buffers) and abilities to
take opportunities (passports).
Vulnerability is not only shocks but slow-burning stressors too. It is
also about exposure/sensitivity to harms/hazards and capacity to cope or
resilience. Further, it is experienced in different ways by different people.
In this vein Sharma et al., (2000:1) note, that even when exposed to the
same event, impacts will vary, depending on the person’s capacity to
cope: that is, to withstand and recover from the impact of that event
(Sharma, et. al., 2000, p.1). In this respects Sen historical work on
entitlement failures and famine was seminal.1 Other seminal works to note
would be Chambers (1989) discussion of vulnerability, risk, shock, stress
and coping mechanisms, and Moser’s (1998) asset vulnerability.
The poverty dynamics literature is also of direct relevance with
particular reference to research on chronic and transient poverty (see in
particular Hulme et al., 2001; Shepherd et al., 2010). In countries with
data, the percentage of the poor that are always poor is around a third of
poor households (see table 1). This implies that two-thirds of the poor
move in and out of poverty depending on vulnerability and capacities to
cope.
Table 1. Selected countries: the chronic poor (‘always poor’) as % of poor households
1
The literature on entitlements and famine has had a ‘major theoretical, empirical and
policy impact’ (Fine 1997:619). Aside from influencing the practice of major global
institutions, the literature has also driven the concept of entitlement into other areas of
interest, from the welfare system (entitlement to benefits) and the legal system
(entitlement to property rights) to human rights (ibid.). Entitlement failure exists when
there is a failure to establish command over sufficient resources for survival (Dreze and
Sen 1981 ). This is fundamentally about the relationship between endowment and
exchange. As Elahi (2006: 544) points out, endowment – which is determined by one’s
entitlements – refers to an individual’s ability to command a resource through legal
means through a process of exchange. For example, an individual can sell (exchange) his
or her labour power (endowment) in return for a wage (resource). Entitlement underpins
the entire process. Although strongly influenced by a material approach insofar as the
framework tends to deal with the ownership of tangible assets, entitlement also
incorporates relational aspects as vulnerability depends to some extent on the nature of
‘terms of trade relationships’ (Vatsa and Krimgold 2000: 136).
3
Indonesia 1993-1997 29
Vietnam 1992-1997 44
Uganda 1992-1999 30-32
South Africa 1997-2001 38
Ethiopia (rural) 1994-2004 32
Source: Calculated from Dercon and Shapiro (2007).
Birkmann (2006: 11), notes that the emergence and early evolution of the
concept of vulnerability was closely linked to the ‘purely hazard-oriented
perception of disaster risk in the 1970s’. Vulnerability was by and large
dominated by ‘technical interventions focused on predicting hazards or
modifying their impact’ (Hilhorst and Bankoff 2004: 2). But while these
early origins framed the concept in relatively narrow terms, the last three
decades or so have witnessed a considerable conceptual expansion of
vulnerability, as well as its application into a wide and diverse range of
disciplines. Now the subject of a huge and burgeoning literature, it has
been increasingly recognised by researcher and practitioner communities
within various disciplines that reducing vulnerability is necessary for
improving wellbeing and human security, particularly in the face of
multiple shocks and stressors (O’Brien 2009: 23). Additionally, within
development and economics it is increasingly acknowledged that
considerations of risk and vulnerability are central to understanding the
dynamics of poverty noted above (Christiaensen and Subbaro 2004).
Further still, the concept of vulnerability has relatively recently been
adopted by those engaged in climate change research, or more
specifically by those investigating the relationship between the impacts of
6
climate change and various anthropocentric dimensions (e.g. Haines et al.
2006; Gaillard 2010). Aside from such practical and operational
imperatives, the concept of vulnerability has contributed greatly to the
advancement and refinement of various academic pursuits. Cardona
(2004) has pointed out that over time vulnerability has helped clarify the
concepts of risk and disaster – concepts which make up the cornerstones
of a number of disciplines, including disaster management (‘vulnerability
has emerged as the most critical concept in disaster studies’ [Vatsa 2004:
1]) and environmental change.
Sources: xxxx
In its most general sense, vulnerability is seen as the risk that a ‘system’
(e.g. household, community, country) would be negatively affected by
‘specific perturbations that impinge on the system’ (Gallopin 2006: 294).
These perturbations that give rise to undesirable outcomes originate from
various sources, including environmental, socio-economic, physical and
political (Naude, et al., 2009: 185). The question of risk is thus at the heart
of the vulnerability concept: how systems deal with and react to risk; what
kinds of outcome result from a particular risk; and through what processes
a risk produces an outcome. Closely related to this notion of risk is the
idea of un/certainty. In a context of imperfect information there an
element of risk involved (for example, not knowing when a natural disaster
or a sudden fall in primary commodity prices will occur), thus giving rise to
uncertainty about, say, the future livelihood of an individual, the wellbeing
7
of a household, or the performance of an economy. From a development
perspective this might mean that vulnerability exists when ‘poverty cannot
be safely ruled out as a possible future scenario’ (Calvo 2008: 1014).
High Low
Sources: Alwang et al., (2001), Davies (1996), Room (2000), Sharma et al., (2000).
9
conditions in which our unit of analysis exists; the type of perturbation or
risky event that the unit of analysis experiences, whether that be a short-
term shock or a longer-term stressor; and the various, complex
interactions between these dimensions and as many reserarchers have
argued, when thinking about these things it is important to apply the
framework to a specific outcome and ask the question: ‘vulnerability to, or
from what exactly?’ (e.g. vulnerability to starvation, vulnerability to
infection, etc.).
10
Perturbations or risks are understood broadly as ‘a potentially
damaging influence on the system of analysis’ or an ‘influence that may
adversely affect a valued attribute of a system’ (Fussel 2007). This is what
Chambers (1989) refers to as the external side of vulnerability, i.e. the
risks, shocks and stress with which an individual or system is confronted
(the internal side representing a lack of coping capacity). Although it
should be noted that while risks are generally considered as external to a
system, this is not always the case, as dangerous practices within a
community (e.g. certain business practices) may also present themselves
as threats (Fussel 2007).
Perturbations can be disaggregated into two broad categories:
shocks and stressors. Shocks refer to sudden risk events, such as floods,
droughts, unemployment and price increases, whereas stressors refer to
more gradual changes, such as changes in service delivery, land
degradation, socio-economic marginalisation, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic
(Hart 2009: 363). A key distinction is thus the difference in time-scale.
However, while the duration of a shock may be short-term, the impacts of
a shock can persist for many years after the initial event. This has been
demonstrated by evidence from Ethiopia where a collapse in output prices
in 2001 and a serious drought in 2002 were found to be still affecting
consumption outcomes in rural Ethiopia several years later (Dercon et al.
2005).
It should also be recognised that shocks and stressors can threaten
an individual’s or a system’s wellbeing in indirect ways. As Dercon (2005:
484) points out, in dealing with the impact of a shock, the ex post coping
responses of a household may ‘destroy or reduce the physical, financial,
human or social capital of the household’. This might happen, for example,
due to the selling off of important or valuable material assets, leaving the
household more vulnerable in the future.
Various disciplines have started to recognise this complex interplay
of shocks/stressors. There have been various efforts to build
interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary understandings of vulnerability and
resilience. Those working in global environmental change have begun to
11
acknowledge that the vulnerability of people to the negative
consequences of climate change does not result solely from environmental
changes by themselves, but from a mixture of stressors (O’Brien et al.
2004). Further, Leichenko and O’Brien (2002) note that food security in
developing countries is influenced by political, economic and social
conditions, as well as climatic factors. This multiple stressors approach to
vulnerability assessments has an important advantage over conventional
approaches: as O’Brien et al. (2009: 24) argue, ‘interventions that address
the outcomes of single stressors may provide measurable results, but if
they do not consider the dynamic context in which a stressor is occurring,
they are unlikely to enhance human security over the longer term’.
Webb and Harinarayan (1999) have proposed that vulnerability itself
be used as a ‘bridging concept’ to better link the fields of humanitarianism
and development. However, multidisciplinary approaches are by no means
straightforward undertakings. As Thywissen (2006: 449-450) explains,
‘multidisciplinarity often results in the same term being defined in
different ways...[as] definitions of the same terms may have been
developed simultaneously and separately in different disciplines’. The
resulting confusion are difficult to escape as most of the definitions are
‘valid in their respective contexts and cannot be discarded’ and that ‘the
search for a single measure of vulnerability is likely to be futile as each
discipline stresses different components of the concept’ (Alwang et al.
2001: 34-35). While this undoubtedly presents academics, practitioners
and policy-makers with various challenges, both methodological as well as
empirical, it is in many ways understandable that such a multiplicity of
interpretations and understandings exist. Indeed, that ‘vulnerability’ can
be applied in such a diverse range of contexts and disciplines is arguably
testament to its strength as an analytical and descriptive concept.
When an individual or a system is affected by a perturbation, it is
unlikely that that perturbation would have a single origin. Rather, the
original perturbation would have combined with, and been shaped by, a
series of other factors that together form the nature of the perturbation as
experienced by the individual/system. To take a well known example,
12
famines are not purely natural phenomena. While a drought-induced food
shortage one year might certainly increase the risk of famine, the actual
risk experienced by a particular household would have ultimately been
influenced by a range of other factors, such as food distribution
mechanisms, global demand, or national or sub-national politics.
Therefore, the risk is usually the product of a complex interaction of
forces.
Many agree that vulnerability is a multifaceted and multidimensional
concept (e.g. Cutter et al. 2000; Bohle 2002; Birkmann 2006). Even if we
were to take as an example a very specific type of vulnerability and
outcome (e.g. the vulnerability of household x falling below a pre-
determined poverty line within five years), there would still be a wide
range of factors to consider when carrying out a vulnerability assessment.
Indeed, vulnerability in its broadest sense is a concept that encompasses
physical, social, economic, environmental and institutional features
reflecting the complex relationships that shape the overall impact of a
given shock or stressor. It is this multidimensionality that aligns the
concept of vulnerability well with the approach of ‘human wellbeing’.
13
3. A ‘HUMAN WELLBEING’ APPROACH
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Chambers’ (1997; 2007) emphasis on the need for the development
profession to listen to the voices of poor and to their perceptions and
feelings about poverty has also been influential (Of course feminist
development thinkers have always stressed the importance of listening,
and of inclusiveness and looking out for the silenced exclusions).
McGregor (2007) suggests a comprehensive way to understand people’s
well-being. He emphasizes that a practical concept of wellbeing should be
conceived as the combination three things which are (i) Needs met (what
people have) (ii) Meaningful act (what people do) and (iii) Satisfaction in
achieving goals (how people be). Copestake (2008: 3) echos this:
‘Wellbeing is defined here as a state of being with others in society where
(a) people’s basic needs are met, (b) where they can act effectively and
meaningfully in pursuit of their goals, and (c) where they feel satisfied with
their life’. Human wellbeing can thus be discussed as three-dimensional: it
takes account of material wellbeing, subjective wellbeing and relational
wellbeing and their dynamic, and evolving interaction. People’s own
perceptions and experience of life matter, as do their relationships and
their material standard of living.
These three dimensions of material, subjective and relational wellbeing
are summarised in Table 4. The columns here are artificial boundaries
where we are suggesting such demarcations are highly fluid. The material
dimension of wellbeing emphasises ‘practical welfare and standards of
living’. The relational emphasises ‘personal and social relations’ and the
subjective emphasises ‘values, perceptions and experience’ (White,
2008:8). The wellbeing lens can take both the individual and the
community as the unit of analysis.2
Table 4. Human Wellbeing: Dimensions, Areas of Study, Indicators and Key determinants
16
patrons (i.e. the relational wellbeing dimension); and felt more
independent with greater levels of mobility (i.e. the subjective wellbeing
dimension). Consistent with Jodha are proposals from Ryan and Deci
(2000: 6-7) and others that autonomy – meaning ‘self-determination,
independence and the regulation of behavior from within’ - is one of the
three fundamental and universal psychological needs (along with
relatedness and competence).
Subjective wellbeing itself (see various recent reviews such as
Samman, 2007) is composed of two aspects: affective (mental health or
hedonic balance), and cognitive (life satisfaction or eudemonic). The focus
for wellbeing is the latter. As Alvarez and Copestake (2008:154) and
Deiner (2006: 401) respectively note, the ‘eudemonic approach
emphasizes more the nature of human beings as searchers of meaning
(actions consistent with their values) through fulfillment of cherished
goals’ and ‘life satisfaction represents a report of how a respondent
evaluates or appraises his or her life taken as a whole. Domain
satisfactions are judgments people make in evaluating major life domains,
such as physical and mental health, work, leisure, social relationships, and
family’.
There is, of course, a whole debate on preference setting to consider
(See Clark, 2007 for wide-ranging discussion). Indeed, it has been argued
that psychosocial factors might be working as additional reinforcement
mechanisms to keeping people in poverty. For example, Harper et al.,
(2003:547) note in their review of the literature the importance of
individual agency and the role of attitudes and aspirations in the inter-
generational transmission of poverty. Further, a circle of low (or frustrated)
aspirations and endemic poverty may be a self-sustaining outcome
(Appadurai, 2004; Ray, 2006). In a empirical review of the determinants
of the inter-generational transmission of poverty, Bird (2007: ix) also
notes,
17
decisions (including in children’s human capital formation) thus
contributing to IGT poverty.
18
The ‘voices’ are editorialized so as to tune out any discordant
sounds and present an overarching narrative that is in perfect
harmony with the bank’s own policies: their ‘cries’ for change are
harnessed to support a particular set of highly normative
prescriptions. In order to obtain quotes that could pack a punch,
Crying Out for Change obscures other linkages, other perspectives,
other parts of the conversation that provide less convenient
justification for the overall narrative.
19
differing needs, wants and capacities depending on the stage of childhood
(e.g. infancy, early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence) but also
the meaning of ‘childhood’ itself is defined by the prevailing context and
culture. Adult poverty differs by age and context but arguably to a lesser
extent than childhood poverty. We can also posit that a further key
difference in children’s experiences is that childhood poverty and
wellbeing are more intensely relational in nature. Adult poverty is also
relational in nature but arguably to a lesser extent than childhood poverty
because for children there is greater reliance on ‘others’ for care and
nurture, typically adults or older children; greater physiological and
psychological vulnerabilities; and reduced autonomy/power.
We can illustrate this further if we consider poverty tracking via a
wellbeing lens during the recent global crisis using the empirical work of
Hossain et al., Turk et al., and May et al., (see table 5).
In terms of child wellbeing and the material wellbeing dimension there
were cross-country reports of school absenteeism and dropout, and some
reports of child labour and/or education expenses being reduced and there
were reports across countries of children combining labour with education.
Whilst in the relational domain there are some clear findings on changes in
the household division of care labour, social tensions, family conflict and
crime. In the Turk et al., studies there was cross-country reports of
children were being left unattended for long hours while mothers worked
late into the evening and sometimes unpaid work of childcare was taken
over either by elderly household members or by the older children. As a
general rule, respondents were trying to protect the nutrition and
education of children: Normally respondents suggested that food
consumption for adults would be cut in order to protect the nutritional
intake of children but there were changes in the quality of food. Finally, in
terms of the subjective domain there is relatively little to report perhaps
because it was not explicitly or formally asked about.
What there is, is striking in terms of evidence of levels of everyday stress
rising and the inter-connection of material, relational and subjective child
and adult wellbeing via, for example, the stress around sending children to
20
school on an empty stomach and how this connected psychological stress,
food insecurity and children's educational access. Economic stress was
understood to be generating tensions - both men and women made many
references to increases in the number of arguments between husbands
and wives, sometimes including violence – and that much of this was
driven by stress over money. Again, this would suggest the inter-linkages
of material, relational and subjective wellbeing and a need for research
design to seek to capture these dimensions and their interactions.
21
Table 5. Using the ‘wellbeing’ approach to analysis crisis impacts of global crisis and general versus child-specific impacts
Wellbeing Impacts Hossain et al., in 5 countries May et al., in 11 countries Turk et al., in 8 countries
dimension reported
Material wellbeing General Food prices still higher than 2007; Export sector Women, particularly in supply chains in South Workers in the urban informal sector are facing
job losses in Jakarta but not in Dhaka; Micro- East Asia have been hard hit via falling wages, particularly high levels of income insecurity;
and informal credit markets effected; higher less decent work and shorter working hours; some layoffs; reduced working hours; laid-off
proportion of income being spent on food; less families have reported reducing their food workers remaining in urban areas; reduced
diverse/lower nutritional value, less; Range of consumption or quality; borrowing money and hours; altered adult food consumption patterns
health impacts reported; selling assets is extremely common; and reduced remittances; increased competition
for local, day-laboring jobs in rural areas;
smallholder, rural households remain vulnerable
to falling commodity prices. Nearly all groups in
all low income countries were unable to access
formal safety protection mechanisms
Child-specific School absenteeism and dropout, and child Education is being prioritized by families but Reports of children combining work/labour with
labour reports education costs are being reduced – through education.
moving children from private to public schools,
cutting tuition or going into debt; research did
not find evidence of significant numbers of
children being taken out of school
Relational General Women eating least/last; intra-household Women, particularly in supply chains in South Some sectors hit hard by the crisis are those
wellbeing tensions, abandonment of elderly; signs of rising East Asia have been hard hit via falling wages, that are dominated by female employment;
social tension. less decent work and shorter working hours Economic stress was understood to be
have increased time burdens and reproductive generating tensions and sometimes, shifting
pressures; the first port of call has been the roles in the households; tensions associated
family and social networks; Some evidence of with competition for scarce work were
family conflict and domestic violence. mentioned in some instances; Young, single
women appeared more resilient to these
impacts than those that were married with
children.
Child-specific Intra-household tensions and abandonment of Some evidence of family conflict and domestic Children were being left unattended for long
children; youth crime reported violence. hours while mothers worked late into the
evening. Sometimes unpaid work of childcare
was taken over either by elderly households
members or by the older children; As a general
rule, respondents were trying to protect the
nutrition and education of children. Normally
respondents suggested that food consumption
for adults would be cut in order to protect the
nutritional intake of children but changes in
quality of food.
Subjective General People’s own crisis indicators identified: na Economic stress was understood to be
wellbeing Changes in prices, reduction in the amount of generating tensions - Both men and women
paid workers; number of vacant dormitories made many references to increases in the
rented for export workers, reduced working number of arguments between husbands and
hours, termination/broken contracts, lay-offs, wives, sometimes including violence - much of
returning migration . this was driven by stress over money.
22
empty stomach and how this connected
psychological stress, food insecurity and
children's educational access.
Sources: Hossain et al., (2009; 2010); May et al., (1999); Turk et al., (2009).
23
4. ANALYSING VULNERABILITY VIA A WELLBEING LENS
24
others as well as wider structures (Giddens 1979). For example, in
their study of resource accessibility and vulnerability in Andhra
Pradesh, India, Bosher et al. (2007) find that the caste system – and
the rigid arrangement of relations within it – is the key factor in
determining who has assets, who can access public facilities, who
has political connections, and who has supportive social networks.
Thus, there is also a relational aspect to access to material assets
and entitlements – a mix of power as political economy and power
as institutions.
Material aspects of vulnerability have been typically measured
as ‘vulnerability to poverty’ or the probability of falling below the
poverty line in the next time period (e.g. Pritchett et al., 2000).
Many have subsequently criticised the economics literature for ‘its
use of money metrics and the underlying presumption that all losses
can be measured in monetary terms’ (Alwang et al. 2001: 5). While
it would be shortsighted to claim that this is true of all the literature
– Moser (1998), for example, adopts an approach dominated by the
relationship between asset ownership and vulnerability, but also
includes intangible and unquantifiable assets, such as household
relations and social capital – there is certainly a case to make that
by focusing overwhelmingly on the material aspects of vulnerability,
it is easy to overlook the many other dimensions. A material focus
on the geographical characteristics of a particular place has, in the
past, and particularly within the disaster risk literature, been used to
identify people living in particular areas as vulnerable, when it is
now widely acknowledged that ‘Hazard risks, their impacts and local
responses are not predetermined by individual or location’ (Webb
and Harinarayan 1999: 293). Table 6 takes the example of a
material stressor – market volatility and illustrates across the
wellbeing dimensions.
Table 6. Examples of vulnerability viewed by a wellbeing lens (material stressor)
Variability – Wellbeing domains
Shock or Material wellbeing Relational Subjective
stressor – wellbeing – wellbeing –
25
‘needs met’ and ‘ability to act ‘life satisfaction’
‘practical welfare meaningfully’ and and ‘values,
and standards of ‘personal and perceptions and
living’ social relations’ experience’
Materia Materia Relatio Relatio Subject Subject
l l nal nal ive ive
snakes buffers snakes buffers snakes buffers
and and and and and and
ladders passpo ladders passpo ladders passpor
rts rts ts
Material Uneven Income Access Informal Higher Re-
income smoothi to knowled propensi appraisi
e.g. market stream ng welfare ge and ty to be ng daily
volatility receipts network exposed situation
mediate s to to in a
d by navigate economi positive
gatekee institutio c light
pers ns stresses
26
ago Bardhan (1984) demonstrated how tied labour contracts –
commonly thought of as ‘inefficient relics of an age when slavery
was condoned (Morduch 1995: 110) – actually mitigated the risk for
agricultural workers of facing low consumption levels in slow
seasons characterised by low employment rates. Another example
might be reciprocity arrangements and inter-household transfers
whereby households cope with misfortune by drawing on the
resources of extended families and communities (Morduch and
Sharma 2002: 575). Table 7 illustrates.
Table 7. Examples of vulnerability viewed by a wellbeing lens (relational stressor)
Variability – Wellbeing domains
Shock or Material wellbeing Relational Subjective
stressor – wellbeing – wellbeing –
27
perceptions of what constitutes being or feeling ‘vulnerable’ can
vary enormously. Research by Valentine (1989) into how public
spaces are experienced differently by men and women has
discussed how perceptions of vulnerability are shaped by this.
However, Hollander (2002) found that women actively resist the
conventional construction of women’s vulnerability. Capturing the
subjectivity displayed in these two examples, Cannon (1994)
explains how, more broadly, the determination of vulnerability is a
complex characteristic formed by a mix of factors, themselves
derived in large part from class, gender and ethnicity and personal
perceptions of vulnerability. The same ideas apply to perceptions of
risk. As Cutter (2003: 2) points out, if rational choice is framed in
relative (and therefore subjective) terms, then it is easier to
understand an ‘irrational’ choice. The example she goes on to offer
brings this point to light: ‘the same risky behaviour (e.g. suicide
bomber) would seem like a perfectly rational choice in one setting
(disenfranchisement of Palestinian youth), but appear as totally
irrational in another (American mass media). The value of a
subjective approach to vulnerability is that it compels us to question
the assumptions that go into both vulnerability assessments, as well
as common attitudes towards vulnerabilities. It also represents a
step in the direction of privileging hitherto silenced voices, and
tailoring a perspective of vulnerability that is more contextually
sensitive (see table 8).
Table 8. Examples of vulnerability viewed by a wellbeing lens (subjective stressor)
Variability – Wellbeing domains
Shock or Material wellbeing Relational Subjective
stressor – wellbeing – wellbeing –
28
Subjective Poor Taking Discrimi Mediatin Social Collectiv
access informal nation in g state exclusio e action
e.g. lower caste to sector access institutio n based
identity formal work to state ns via on caste
sector institutio non- identity
employ ns caste
ment network
s
5
Although these last two are different disciplinary approaches there is some
overlap in a focus on the formal and informal ‘rules of the game’ or ways of doing
things For Bourdieu, power is an unconscious negotiation of an individual and
her/his social environment as s/he unconsciously interacts with this environment
to define his/her dispositions, tendencies, propensities and inclinations.
29
everyone has to make these choices but they are starker for those
with fewer resources.
Redmond (2009) in his application of Lister’s approach to child
agency provides examples of child agency a such as children who
take advantage of informal and ad-hoc opportunities to earn income
(ie agency in the material wellbeing domain), help parents with
housework and childcare (agency in the relational wellbeing
domain) and reappraise their daily situation in a positive light
(agency in the subjective wellbeing domain). We can start to map
Redmond and Lister’s concepts of agency across wellbeing domains.
Their work particularly deals with the capacity to cope aspects –
providing examples of children’s agency or capacity to cope. Many
of these are slow burning stressors rather than acute crises.
Redmond argues that children’s agency – here anaylsed as
examples of resilience or capacity to cope - is generally exercised in
the domains of the everyday and personal (what Lister terms
‘getting by’, ‘getting back at’). Children are less likely to exert
agency that is strategic and political (‘getting out’, ‘getting
organised’), although children can do this, especially with the
facilitation of adults (White and Choudhury (2007) discuss how
adults can provide ‘supplements and extensions’). Getting
organised is constrained by people’s subjectivities, for example,
how they understand and account for their own experiences and
identities and the extent to which they experience belonging and
‘sameness’ with others. People overcome constraints to getting
organised by collective self-help, and political action. Individual
agency is of course a product of wider social forces. As Lister notes
(2004:128) it is not only about how those in poverty (including
children) act, but also about how those in power act in relation to
them – in this discussion how poor as well as richer adults act with
poor children. Further, structures are perpetuated or modified by
individual and collective action and non-action. What matters is not
just the system of cultural norms, values, attitudes and behaviours
30
that is transmitted across generations, but also the degree to which
a person assumes these or identifies herself with them.
31
Table 9. Agency and vulnerability by a wellbeing lens
32
Agency Dimension of wellbeing with examples
Material Relational Subjective
officially take work decisions to
sanctioned and/or look for work,
responses to education. seek
poverty education etc.
33
5. CONCLUSIONS
34
information on the causes of vulnerability and consider the
dynamics of vulnerability before, during and after the hazard occurs.
Fifth, wellbeing helps move analysis from thresholds to continuums
and dynamics – from vulnerability to poverty (based on a poverty
line threshold) to vulnerability to greater poverty severity and a
focus on processes as well as thresholds or the gradient of
downward spiral. Sixth, wellbeing can help with the
‘vulnerability/resilient to what’ question and to identification of
different entitlement losses. Not only in the material domain - land;
labour; state transfers; remittances but also the relational and
subjective dimensions.
Key questions for future research that wellbeing could thus assist
with are: What are the endowments and buffers (or lack of them)
that are especially likely to make people vulnerable? How to
understand that where people are located in society not only plays a
role in the different snakes and ladders they face but how their end
goals differ too by different tastes and goals and differences in
capacities to cope under adversity? Why are opportunities open to
some as coping strategies proscribed to others due to gender,
ethnicity, class, etc? How does the nature of exposure to harm -
extent in time, quantity and weight of exposure, speed and density
(ie chronic or slow stressor) shape vulnerability and resilience? How
do major disinvestments as a result of snakes lead to future risks?
How do entitlement failure types – production-based entitlement;
labour entitlements; trade entitlements; transfer entitlements –
interact with stressors and shocks? To what extent are there ‘layers
of resilience’ like an onion? (ie the formal welfare system of the
state if it exists; social relationship support in groups and networks,
and distressed asset sales and ill-health as coping mechanisms),
and how are vulnerability and resilience transmitted across time and
35
generations?
36
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37
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Dercon, S. and Joseph S. Shapiro (2007). Moving On, Staying Behind,
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